Why am I awake?

[pseydtonne]

My official shift is 10 to 6:30. Since I'm in training and we don't directly answer phones, it's variable. This morning I was supposed to have a training teleconference and Webex session at 9.

I was going to go to bed early. Then I got a phone call from a friend needing an XP install disk. Next thing I know I'm hanging out with cool people in Somerville, diagnosing hardware problems on a giant old laptop and installing XP while maintaining hipness.

My friend had just bought a USB wifi stick. For once the installer disk for it came in handy as we turned on networking and upgraded this beast of a laptop to SP3 without having to run a cat5 line from another room.

Note to self: get a USB wifi stick for my traveling tool kit. Even when I have wifi, not every other machine does when it's shot.

We all wound up back at my house to grab a MacOS X.4 install disk and a PCI wifi card for another machine. Then I had to drive everyone back to Somerville and drive back home to Brookline again. The point is that I got to bed late -- 1:30. I had to be up at 7:30.

Thanks to half the city getting a holiday, I faced no real traffic and got to work at 8:45. Then I found out the developer in Pune (a city in India on their west coast, near Mumbai) got feverish and went home early. Also, half of his office is out because of Cyclone Phyan -- I guess they're called typhoons in the Pacific, hurricanes in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico but cyclones in the Indian Ocean.

The upshot is that the meeting has been moved to the same time Friday. I gotta go through this again, when there is guaranteed to be traffic. I must go to bed early on Thursday -- and tonight, for that matter.

I may give into the demons of caffeine today. I get so proud about not doing it but... yeah, pride won't turn my keyboard into a pillow. I don't feel tired as much as I feel like I'm gripping onto the edge of my desk.

Oh, whine whine whine. I have no real problems if this is my problem -- oh, I can go home early since I clocked in early. Meanwhile, poor fangirl715 is back in the hospital so my thoughts are on her.

Also, Prince Charles went to Montreal. Some folks got their heads thrumped by the cops for protesting it. The Prince met Cirque du Soleil. 80% of Quebeckers think the monarchy is outdated, according to the Montreal Presse. Mind you, the same newspaper printed an editorial that institutional bilingualism is hurting the French language in Quebec... and used a stock photo of a road sign in Ontario to make their point. The sign is directing people back to the U.S., which may be the bigger point or a sarcastic counterpoint -- maybe that's the layout department rolling its eyes at the columnist.

The more I think about the article, the more I think the photo is an eye-rolling. The author claims it's a waste of government resources to send two pamphlets to homes letting them know about H1N1 vaccinations, one in English and one in French. Oh c'mon! There's an actual health problem out there with a preventative solution readily available and you want to complain that advertising for it is a waste? Sheesh. "This is Quebec and we all speak French." No, it's Quebec and a million citizens out of seven million are still unilingual anglophones -- well, une-et-demie. If you've lived in Quebec long enough to get junk mail, wouldn't you have to be able to read bills and jury duty notices in French? Heck, try reading a Montreal parking ticket without knowing French.

For those that want to know how I know that's not exactly a sign in Quebec: the shape of the route number on the sign is the base of a trapezoid. That's the symbol for a secondary or county road in Ontario. Since the digit itself is looking like a 3, this is probably a sign in Windsor where highway 401 ends and brings traffic into Detroit.

Okay, enough rambling -- be sure to remember Flanders Field, where Ned Flanders' late wife could be resting. Rod and Tod will be thinking of her too.